Hello, and welcome to the forums. I am sorry for the delay, but I have been mulling this over in my head for a while trying to figure out what to say. I think I finally got everything sorted out.
I should start off by saying that you may need to explore alternative methods of interacting with your son. As I have posted far too many times on this forum, you need to be working WITH your son, not AT him. I really should write a book about this, as this issue gets brought up so often.
Allow me to explain fully. The reality of the world is that certain behaviors are harmful, not because they are socially inappropriate (such as swearing), but because they harm things directly. These include physical violence against others, stealing things, destroying property, intentionally harming others, scamming people, etc. I am sure that if you sat down, you could make a pretty long list of harmful things that shouldn't be done. An important part of raising children is getting them to avoid acting in these ways, not just in the immediate short term, but for the entirety of their lives. And the way to do this is relatively strait forward:
1. You must get their agreement that a certain behavior is unacceptable, and needs to stop.
2. Then you have to work with them and figure out a way to HELP them stop these inappropriate actions.
To extrapolate on those two points. Item number 1 is often overlooked by many parents. When a child does something considered inappropriate, the first thing most parents do is jump strait to punishment. This does not work well. Most children figure out that certain actions lead to discomfort, and thus avoid those actions. Which is the basis of how the system works. Unfortunately this system often fails once the threat of discomfort has been removed. I cant tell you all the students I have seen fail out of freshmen year at college because they didnt study. Once they move out to the dorms and dont have their parents to nag on them, they stop doing things that they should do because the threat of nagging given by the parents is no longer there. If you want your guidance to be in effect for longer then your threat, then you cant rely on a threat based system for teaching your son.
Likewise, repeatedly punishing your son doesnt help to strengthen the parent child bond. Trust me when I say that this is not a very strong bond with autistic children. I am not saying that your child dislikes you, but he isnt likely to continue coming back and opening up to you if you keep punishing him. Forgive the poor metaphor, but normal children are like dogs. You can hit a dog and it will still come when you call it. But if you hit a cat, good luck ever getting it to come near you again. Consider your child to be like a cat. Likewise, you can punish a normal child, and they will still open up to you and trust you, not really going to happen with an autistic child. You need to earn their trust and respect by treating them with respect. Repeatedly punishing your son, especially as he gets older, and parental influence declines will do nothing but put a rift in your family, and cause your son to become more angry, not less.
Instead, if you want your son to control his anger, not because he fears punishment, but instead due to internal self-control, then he needs to be in agreement that his anger needs to be controlled. The trick is how to convince him of this. For starters, sit your son down and tell him that you would like to talk about ways to help him. Tell him that you arent angry, and that you arent here to punish him, you just want to talk to him and help the family get over their problems so that there is peace in the house and nobody needs to get punished.
Once you are all sitting down, explain to him what is inappropriate, and why it is inappropriate, I.E. why that is a problem. Why does your son's angry screaming at his sister present a problem? Explain to him in full detail what the result is. Tell him that it makes his sister angry, and everybody gets upset, which only makes the problems worse. Tell him that he will not be able to work a job, and provide for himself if he screams at people who he tries to work with. Explain to him that screaming at people in public, especially if he is stronger then them, is considered threatening, and he may be arrested by the police. Basically, sit him down and explain in full and complete detail as much as you possibly can why losing his temper is a problem, and what the results are, on both his relationship with others, and how society treats him. What you need to do is get your son to acknowledge that losing his temper is a problem that needs to be solved.
Next, tell your son that you want to work with him to HELP (not force) him in his attempts to control his anger. Sit down with him, and work out situations where he has had problems in the past. Figure out what made him angry, and what can be done to prevent that from happening again. Perhaps he should avoid certain situations. Perhaps he needs different coping techniques. Find out what is making him angry, and work with him on how to either avoid, or deal with that problem. Also, give him a good outlet for his aggression. Something as simple as some padded boxing gloves and a sturdy wall in his room may be a great start. Also, work out what he should do when he is becoming angry. For starters he should try to work out the situation if possible. Remain calm and talk your way through. If that is not possible, then get away from the situation. Just take some time to walk around a bit and calm down.
If he does lose his temper, then what should he do about it. I personally think that removing himself from the situation, and calming down would be a good start. After that, he must attempt to apologize for his outburst. A simple note saying, 'my apologize, I lost my temper when I shouldn't have, and I am sorry that I treated you poorly.' will suffice. Try not to tell your son that he is a bad person just because he failed. Instead, just tell him that he must apologize to those he hurt, and try to figure out how to prevent it from happening again.
It seems like he is already doing this:
Smiley64 wrote:
He has been getting angry during social conflict (he clenches his fists and his teeth - the other day, whilst out with his Nana, he lost it with his cousin and walked off to go out of the shopping mall. Needless to say Nana had to run after him to grab him back. He ignored (or didn't hear?) her when she called his name. She's late 60s so running after a 12yo in a shopping mall is not the best thing for her. He told her he was angry and that he could look after himself.
What would you have him do instead, punch his cousin? To me it sounds as though he acted appropriately by getting away from the situation. And to be honest, he is 12 years old, I think he is mature enough to be more then 10 feet away from his Nana. Perhaps next time, he could just go some place else in the store, and you could swing by to pick him up when you are done. My guess is that he would be fine waiting in the electronics or sports sections for a few minutes without adult supervision.
As for your current method of attempting to modify behavior via time outs:
Younger children may lack the ability to understand things fully. As in they dont know the full affects of how they hurt other people, and dont understand what the big problem is. In that situation, a typical reward/punishment system is often times useful. I.E. brush your teeth and you get a quarter, hit your sister and loose a quarter. Since they are not capable of seeing far enough into the future to understand the full implications of their actions, you often have to provide more immediate consequences so that they can understand the importance of acting a certain way. However, I really need to make this obviously clear. This method of reward/punishment is only a TEMPORARY, stop gap measure until your child is old enough to see the full consequences of his actions. Once he is capable of understanding that, providing additional consequences (such as your husband's idea of giving him a time out) only serve to annoy, and infuriate your son. To be honest, this sort of parenting technique really shouldn't be used much past the age of 10, at the latest. It saddens me how many parents I see try to force their children to act in certain ways via threats at later ages. I mean really, when you ground your teenager do you think that fixes anything, or does it just make them angry and more defiant.
20 Jul 2009, 9:41 pm
